Bob Feller Career

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

I don't see how one we can give credit for events which did not happen, only those which did. I can't get him close to the top 10 because I don't see how we can use seasons that did not happen to move him up, or deduct seasons that did actually happen from others.

The best pitcher may be some guy who never made it into the majors. Maybe it was some farm kid in 1877 who chose to become a grocer instead. Maybe it was some guy who never left the sandlots. When we are ranking and talking about the best, what we are really saying and doing is judging the best careers in MLB, because that's the highest level of competition there has been and presents a reasonable dataset, counting those we can reasonably evaluate by some measure beyond the emotional. Could Feller have been a top 10 possible talent? Maybe. Would Feller rank higher if he hadn't missed 4 years? Quite possibly. He might also have suffered a severe injury in 1943 and been out of baseball and a footnote today. One can't really evaluate that which did not happen to give extra points to selected people. I know this is an unpopular and bummer of a view, but I just don't see a way to do it within the confines of reason.

Yes, but while anything is possible, some outcomes are far more probable than others, no? Don't you think the chances he would have performed at a similar level are much higher than that he would have sustained a career ending injury? I wouldn't go so far as to simply credit anyone with numbers for hypothetical seasons, but I think at some level one can consider the phenomenon in one's assessment.